Brain Storm (US Edition) (2 page)

She looked over in the direction of the sentry at the far corner and didn't see anything that indicated he had noticed her activity. She remained there watching him for a long moment and then retreated back in the direction she had come. She could now operate on this side of the wall with impunity until the other sentry retook his allotted position.

Knowing that the sentry could come back at any moment Sara didn't hang around wasting time. She took the mini crossbow back out of her pack and tied the line to another bolt. Crossing to the side of the wall nearest to the statue she raised the bow and fired the dart into the leg of the statue, just below the calf. This time she maintained a hold on one end of the line and it stretched out diagonally from her position to the leg. Climbing swiftly Sara made her way up the rope to the leg hanging just above the ankle and the air vent which opened under there.

The vent had a lock, of course, with a keypad access code. Sara had to assume that the CDM had reprogrammed all the codes when they took over the facility and so the code she had been given in her briefing would be obsolete. Instead of entering that code she held on to her rope with her left hand bracing her feet on the side of the statue to keep from swinging, and started to bypass the keypad by rewiring it with a dummy system.

A fly came out of the darkness and started flying in her face. She tried to blow it away but it just flitted around in front of her some more. Keeping a tight grip Sara let go with one hand. She waited until the fly was just in front of her nose and then she struck. Her hand shot up in front of her face and her fist closed around the insect in mid-air. She squeezed her hand closed to destroy the annoyance before she concentrated on her task.

Voices drifted up to her from below. She listened to them but didn't halt her work. From the sounds of it some of the terrorists were starting to bet annoyed at the lack of a response to their actions from the governor of the sector. Some also
appeared to be getting jittery about the large police presence surrounding the park and who they were going to get away.

The voices passed out of range of her hearing and after a long minute more Sara got past the lock and was able to swing the cover of the vent open and to pull herself inside and give her aching arm a rest. As soon as her body was inside the vent all the light was blocked out. Sara could have used the micro-torch kept in her thigh pocket to light the way but all it would have shown her were the insides of stainless steel air vents. She would be able to make her way
through them by feel just as easily as if she could see, and there would be no leakage of light through the seams of the vents or other access grills this way.

The only sound she made as she worked her way through the cramped confines of the vents was the quiet shushing as the material of her clothes was drawn across the metal. The sterile air had a faintly metallic
odor to it.

She chose first to survey the lower levels where the terrorists claimed to have set up their explosives and where the hostages were no doubt still being held. However she found her progress seriously hampered. On both the ground floor and the level directly above the CDM had welded sheet metal over each access grill she came to. She couldn't see the welds in the darkness but by touch she could feel some of the seepage and tell that the welds had been done sloppily and in a hurry. But even though the job wasn't perfect it prevented Sara from seeing out and assessing the situation before she moved in properly.
She wasn't able to map out movements of the terrorists, nor where the explosives and hostages were located. She could have tried to make her own peephole but any such activity could have alerted her enemies to her presence allowing them to open up with automatic weapons while she was still trapped in the vents.

There was no room for her to turn around so Sara was forced to shuffle back in reverse until she came to the access ladder she had taken down to that floor. She took that level up so that she was on the fourth floor but was basically inside the third floor ceiling. Those levels were used primarily to store cleaning supplies and for the machinery that powered the facilities throughout the statue and immediately outside. The floors above that could only be accessed through narrow tourist stairways, one up and one down, to let the tourists get a view out through the eyes of the statue. During her surveys Sara had discovered that the terrorists had only progressed as far as the third floor and at that only to post guards at the
access points to the lower levels. There was a guard posted at the service elevator and one each at the two doorways to the access stairwells. Sara would have to incapacitate them all if she was to succeed.

She took out the one at the east side stairwell first. He was positioned almost directly below an access grill and she had it open and the sedative pumping into his neck in less than the space between heart beats. She left his body slumped where it was, nobody should be coming around there anytime soon and he wouldn't wake up for a couple of hours. The second guard was taken out just as easily, Sara used the massive cleaning bots, built for scaling and cleaning the outside of the statue, for cover and knocked him out with another sedative injection. She took a moment then to replace the three empty spaces in her injecting glove with fresh dosed of sedative. The glove contained four doses but Sara liked to have at least two ready for each target in case of unforeseen complications.

The terrorist in position outside the elevator was a trickier proposition. The area directly in front of where he stood was clear and devoid of cover. The doors to the elevator were directly behind him built into the wall so there was no cover from that angle. Sara watched him from her position crouched behind an old backup power generator and decided that the direct approach would be best under the circumstances. Getting a grip on the silenced pistol she carried just in case, she was supposed to be law enforcement and so killing had to be used as a last resort only, she broke cover and sprinted at the guard.

His eyes went wide as she rushed at him and he wasted precious moments. By the time he finally started trying to bring his weapon to bear Sara was right there in front of them. Taking hold of his assault rifle by the top of the barrel with her left hand she tugged it forward and the guard off balance. With her other hand she left the pistol where it was and delivered the sedative and this floor was cleared.

Sara used the tip of her combat knife to prize the doors to the elevator open and grunted with the effort of forcing them apart far enough for her to pass through, luckily the doors did not attempt to close back on her. She assumed the terrorists had locked the elevator down and that it would remain stationary wherever it was. If not she could either be crushed below or above it if the terrorists decided they wanted to take a look at the view and weren't willing to make the trip up the stairs.

Sara climbed inside and took hold of the maintenance ladder. She hadn't got into this line of work so that she could live a risk free life. Sometimes Sara found it
difficult to believe that she was actually doing this for a living. But climbing down a ladder into a confrontation with an unknown number of terrorists, hoping to rescue hostages who could be held anywhere on the bottom two floors, with the risk of the terrorists blowing the statue up around her along with the usual risks of being shot, wasn't exactly the time for reminiscing about the past. Instead Sara calmed her mind, clearing it of distractions like concern for her own survival and the futility of sending in a single agent to take care of a situation as extreme as this, all that mattered was the mission.

She needed to get a look at the situation on both the lower floors. Her first priorities were to remove the threat of an explosion and to safeguard the hostages. Once that was taken care of she could call in for backup to finish mopping up the remaining terrorists.

Sara reached the inside of the lift doors on the second floor and prepared for the most dangerous moment of the mission thus far. She had no choice but to open those doors and pass inside. The problem was she had no idea what waited on the other side of those doors and she would be a sitting duck until she was out of this shaft.

Well hanging here on this ladder for any longer isn't going to change those facts.
Sara again made sure her pistol was ready to be drawn and then, holding onto the maintenance ladder with her left hand, she took her combat knife in her right hand and stretched out to wedge it between the elevator doors. The doors on this level opened much more easily as soon as Sara started to prize them apart automatic systems took over and the doors glided open.

The terrorist posted outside the elevator began to turn around in the direction of the noise sweeping up the assault shotgun he carried as he did so.

Chapter
Two

Sara swung off the ladder at the terrorist. Her rather petite frame, perfect for sneaking around but not a fighters build, was nonetheless sufficient to take the CDM terrorist off his feet. The split second she had had to recognize and react to the threat hadn't given her time to take stock of the rest of her surroundings. But at that moment in time they were not important. A hundred CDM terrorists could be closing down on her but if she didn't take care of this one man none of that would matter, she could deal with whatever was there after she was through with this.

Their arms were tangled together preventing either bringing a weapon in to play. The terrorist made sure to keep Sara's arm, in which she was still holding her knife, angled away from his body. She had to take him down and the terrorist struggled to do the same to her but the thing was he didn't have to take Sara out personally to ensure her mission failed. All he had to do was call out for help. Before he could
realize that it would be that simple Sara twisted around in his grip and angled her elbow in at his throat.

She was released from his grip instantly while the terrorist brought his hands up to his ruined windpipe. He clawed at his neck with his fingers but his motions grew slower as lack of oxygen took its toll. Sara rolled up to one knee, her knife dropped to the floor and replaced by her silenced pistol, and surveyed her surroundings. Sara wasn't one to trust in luck if she could help it but she was more than willing to accept luck when it was dropped in her like this lap.

It appeared that the elevator was contained in its own small private room on this level. Meaning that no-one had seen her little tussle with the CDM man guarding it. Of course that didn't mean that nobody had heard it. While they had been doubly lucky in that they had not toppled any of the crates or boxes stacked up around the walls of this room the fight could still have been heard. Sara moved into the shadows of the crates on the right hand side of the door, where she would be behind it if it was opened. She waited with her pistol in her hands for a couple of minutes to see if anybody had been attracted by the brief commotion.

When nobody came to investigate Sara took another couple of minutes to pull the body out of direct sight and stuff it behind some crates. It wouldn't stop them knowing he was missing if they came to check up on him, but it would stop them being certain that he had been killed.

There was less danger for her exiting the elevator room because she could see out through the thin rectangle of glass in the door that there was nobody in the corridor ahead of her unless they were crouched down directly in front of or to the side of the door. Sara pulled the door towards her and rolled out through the gap rotating as she did so, so that when she came up after the roll she was facing back at the areas next to the door where she hadn't been able to see. There was nobody there so Sara proceeded deeper into the statue.

It took her over half an hour of snooping and sneaking around the almost labyrinthine corridors, backtracking repeatedly to avoid patrols, checking every room to see if it contained hostages or explosives, to discover that neither hostages nor explosives were located on this level. She did build a mental picture of the number and positions of the terrorists on this level and the threats they would pose. For a brief time she considered trying to take them out now to leave the terrorists on the next floor down without any reinforcements. But she had to stay focused on her main task if she slipped up just once on a single terrorist here the hostages, which had to be located below, wouldn't stand a chance. Even if she didn't slip up clearing the entire floor of terrorists silently would take more time than she was willing to believe the negotiators in contact with the CDM spokesperson could buy.

Instead Sara made her way back to the elevator room knowing she was going to have to go through the process of emerging from the elevator into a totally unknown hostile situation all over again.

She leaned out from the maintenance ladder and used the tip of her combat knife to start the doors opening.
After she had them in motion the doors continued to open without further effort on her part. There was no guard stationed immediately outside these doors but neither were they located in a little room all to themselves. These opened out into what appeared to be the main foyer of the statue. Sara saw three CDM terrorists in the first instant after the doors opened. Luckily for her they all had their attention focused on the main front entrance to the statue and didn't appear to have heard the doors opening. They kept their attention focused outwards through the thick glass doors of the entrance. They had the lights dimmed and Sara could make out the human guards and reprogrammed security mech they had outside. Sara could also see the reflections of the three terrorists in the foyer with her and knew that she would have to be careful when she moved to avoid giving herself away in them.